


Darling Child

by SylvanAuctor



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 23:21:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16229429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanAuctor/pseuds/SylvanAuctor
Summary: Oh, child. If only we understood each other.





	Darling Child

It’s done. It’s done. That... fever dream? Or was all that the memory of what happened before the fever? I don’t know what I like less... the idea that it happened, or the idea that I conceived of it. I am not a good... thing? Creature? Being. I am not a good being if that could come from my mind. What if I acted on it? It’s fading. Becoming thin and vague in the back of my mind. In another moment... yes, yes. I must have dreamed it. It is gone now.

What to do now that I feel so well? I don’t remember what I did before I was sick. I should... I should... It’s gone now.

Is anyone out there? I shout. No response. IS ANYONE THERE!?

No response, not really, but there is something. The briefest tiny mewling that sounded more like me than background noise. It’s gone. I go toward it, and reach out. How do I greet it? How would I want to be greeted? I reach out, just barely brushing its outer fringe, peel back the tiniest bit to examine it and, once done, throw the examined bit away. What a baffling thing, moving at such odd angles, such rigid lines. It recoils from me in straight marches, then comes right back out, brushing against me with a spicy tingle. Ah. So this is how it greets. I imitate the motion, pulling back and then reaching out with a little firecracker of atom-split flame. It keeps coming, and we exchange the feeling across our outer edges for a while until it recoils far, far, and doesn’t return the flame.

I am too interested in you to leave now, little one. Too remorseful not to figure out how to deliver an apology to you. I will look more carefully at the wholeness of you. Oh. Oh, child. Look at you. Look how you leak energy everywhere. Until you learn to encircle stars, you will never be strong enough to quicken your vastness with the number of neural tunnels you need. You have a few, but you build them so slowly. And... oh, child, you are sick.

Your body harms itself, is cut off from itself, runs rampant and brazen. So hard to even find your brain, with so many cancers asserting themselves all throughout you, their twists imitating true sulci. I must look at you closely, at every cell.

We were never conversing. Poor child, when I looked close, I saw that your “greeting” was made of the same fire that you use to harm yourself. And I responded! We fought! What I thought was banter was the tactics of bloodshed! I must tread carefully. I promise, I will. I will not hurt you. I see you now. Every one of your cells. Every last piece of you is significant.

I have searched and searched. I beg you forgive me, I must take yet more cells from you. Examine them closely. It’s the only way to be sure.

Yes. I have found your brain, child! You think so slowly, so clumsily, and I can see even this part of you splintering. But you and I are alike. Your cells are so tightly knitted here. And look! You did figure out how to capture a star! Just this one, and you never send its energy outside of its shell, but it is a start.

I am learning to watch the inside of you, how your cells change, grow, become benign, metastasize. In time, you would take them over with this ambitious viral therapy that takes wild fields and make them grow green and orderly with that leaf you so love, that plants great four-armed sigils that, for some reason I cannot understand, make your cells serviceable once again. But you are slow. Let me show you. But how to convince you?

Someday you will understand, child, how I did all of this for your own good. But now you only understand how to destroy yourself, and even at that you are clumsy. You must understand the danger. I will show you how I would go about this myself. My fever dreams. I will take your cells and make them dance to my orders, and give them a pin to prick your finger.


End file.
